How To Earn Gift Cards Using MyPoints: The Quick & Simple Way

I have been using MyPoints to earn gift cards for at least ten years. It was the first online point program that I ever joined and my experience with it was (and continues to be) so positive that it caused me to go on and join many more similar programs.

How To Earn Gift Cards Using MyPoints: The Quick & Simple Way

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There are more than a dozen ways to earn with MyPoints and I plan to cover them in just a moment but first, here are a few more facts about MyPoints.

1. Sign Up For A MyPoints Account

2. Look Around The MyPoints Website

Whenever you sign up for a points program, my recommendation is to spend 30 minutes or so familiarizing yourself with how the program works. Click through all the ways to earn points and make a note of those that you think would work best for you.

I have a list of the current ways to earn points through MyPoints down below, but point programs often change things so there might be new ways to earn points or something I have listed might not exist anymore.

3. Start Earning Points

Once you have familiarized yourself with all the ways MyPoints offers to earn points and have picked the ones that will work best for you it is time to get to work securing the number of points you need to cash out for your first gift card.

4. Cash Out For One Of These Four Different Options

1. Gift Cards

Gift cards start at 480 points for a $3 gift card to Amazon and go up to 15,800 points for a $500 gift card for American Airlines.

There is a $25 PayPal gift card for 4,550 points and a $50 PayPal gift card for 8,950 points, making the larger card a slightly better per point value. Money is automatically put in your PayPal account when you pick these cards.

3. Visa Prepaid Cards

Spend your money anywhere you wish on whatever you want by cashing in your points for a prepaid visa card. MyPoints offers a $25 for 4600 points and a $50 card for 9000 points, making the larger card a slightly better deal.

4. Airmiles

If you are United Mileage Plus members (like we are), you can cash your MyPoints points in for miles starting at 1,000 miles for 3,900 points.

5. Spend Your Earnings And Repeat

Once you have earned one payout from MyPoints, you will be hooked and will go on to earn more gift cards. I receive several per year.

Simple & Quick Ways To Earn Gift Cards Using MyPoints

These six ways to earn points you can cash in for gift cards at MyPoints are for things you probably do anyway, but right now you are not receiving any reward for doing them.

That or they are just so quick and straightforward to do, like number one: we all have email accounts we check daily, why not earn a few points toward gift cards by spending just a few seconds more time in them?

1. Click-through Emails

My favorite way to earn with MyPoints is through the click-through emails that they send to your inbox on an almost daily basis. Each one is worth 5 points and it takes just a few seconds to click on the box, look at the site listed and then click out again.

I opened a separate email box just for point programs so I don’t have to worry about MyPoints emails and emails from allmy other point programs burying my time-sensitive emails from work, friends or other sources.

2. Shop & Earn Online

I have earned a lot of MyPoints through their shop and earn area because after comparing cash back offers around the web, I have found that MyPoints often has the highest ones for the stores I shop at. MyPoints also has over 1,000 different places to shop in their cash back area.

To use the shop & earn function you can either head over to MyPoints and enter the store you want to shop at or you can download their handy browser tool that will alert you to cash back deals and coupons whenever you are on a site that they offer one for. One last way to use this feature is to download the MyPoints app and use it to head to the website you wish to shop at.

A thrifty perk I love about this feature is it also includes many of my favorite daily deal sites like Groupon and Living Social, making it a great way to double-dip savings by getting a great daily deal and points for purchasing it through MyPoints.

3. Shop & Earn In-Store

Right now this feature is only available on the website and not the app–but I can see that changing with time. Before you go out grocery shopping, head to the MyPoints Website and click on the Shop tab. Under it, you will find “In-Store”, click on it and see if something you were planning on buying has points available. To receive those points all you have to do is click on the promotion and add it to your list and when you get home, take a few seconds to take a picture of your receipt for the item and upload it to the website.

4. Printable Coupons

If you already use printable coupons at the grocery, it won’t take that much extra time to head to the MyPoints “grocery coupons” tab found under “Shop” and scroll through what coupons you could print for items on your grocery list. You will earn one point for every grocery coupon you print (up to 500) and another 25 points when the coupon is redeemed at the store (please note: it can take up to 90 days for these points to post to your account).

5. Buy E-Gift Cards For Planned Purchases

The last item listed under the “shop” tab is “Buy Gift Cards.” This does take a bit of planning as the gift cards can take up to 2 business days to arrive in your email box, but the points can add up. You were already planning to make these purchases anyway, so why not get a reward for them by earning MyPoints points that you can cash in for gift cards for more purchases?

Here is an example based on deals I found in the “Buy Gift Cards” section as I was writing this article:

You are planning a vacation that is two months away

You want to book an Airbnb, you find one you like and realize it is going to cost just over $200. Before you book it, head to the “Buy Gift Cards” section of MyPoints, which will send you to MyGiftCardsPlus. Set up an account and then purchase the $200 Airbnb gift card and earn 960 MyPoints back.

You know the city you are staying in has a Rainforest Cafe and you want to take the kids there. You figure the bill will come out to at least $60 (plus tip) so you head over to MyGiftCardsPlus through MyPoints and order a $50 Rainforest Cafe e-gift card which gives you 320 MyPoints.

While searching Groupon for discounted tickets to attractions in the area, you realize there is one you would like to buy and it costs $25, so you hop to MyGiftCardsPlus through MyPoints and order a $25 e-gift card for Groupon and earn 80 MyPoints back.

By planning and using MyGiftCardsPlus through MyPoints you earned 1,360 points, you can use 790 of those points for a $5 Walmart e-gift card to put towards road trip snacks and cash in another 480 points for a $3 e-gift card towards a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee to help you stay energized while packing up for the trip. And you still have 90 MyPoints left towards another gift card for later.

6. Before You Sign Up For Anything, Check This Area

Click on the “Deals” tab, and there you will find ways to earn points by signing up for free trials and other similar offers. Although it would be time consuming to sign up for trials of things you have no interest in just for points, this is an easy way to earn points if you were planning on signing up for a new service anyway.

At the time I wrote this article, the deal section of MyPoints was offering 1,000 points for those who purchased three months of wireless service through Mint Mobile as well as 1,000 points for those that signed up for a free trial of Bluprint (and 2,000 additional points if you stay subscribed after your first month). These offers tend to change quickly and I am including these here as examples only.

More Ways To Earn Gift Cards Through MyPoints

These following ways to earn points are more time consuming and are for things you might not be doing already. However, I want to mention them because I know that for some people doing things like answering surveys now and again to earn a few more gift cards can make that tight budget just a bit more livable.

7. Surveys

Surveys are–of course–time-consuming, but they are another way of making more points. I don’t do them on a regular basis currently unless I notice I am really close to having enough points to redeem a card. Then on an evening when I am too tired to do much else than watch TV, I will grab my laptop and snuggle up beside my hubby and do a few surveys while watching TV together.

You can do surveys on your smartphone too by using the MyPoints app.

8. Watch Videos On Your Laptop Or Desktop

It can take a while to earn points through watching videos and the payout is relatively low; however, it is a pretty mindless way to earn points. Do you have a few chores to do around the house? Set up your laptop in a central location and open it up the video tab of MyPoints, let the videos run as you go about doing those chores. Make sure to check the laptop from time to time to make sure the videos are still playing. Now you turned chore time into point-earning time.

9. Watch Videos On Your SmartPhone Using This App

I scrolled way down to the bottom of the MyPoints homepage and found a tab labeled mobile apps, I assumed this was just an advertisement for their MyPoints app–but I was wrong. It turns out you can earn MyPoints when you download the DailyScoop mobile app onto your phone and watch the videos on it.

10. Set And Reach A Monthly Goal

The Monthly Goal area plus numbers 11, 12, 13 and 14 can be found under the “More” tab on the MyPoints website. When you click on it, you will come to a chart where you can fill in MyPoint activity goals for yourself such as how many time you think you can answer the Daily Poll, how many surveys you will complete, how many grocery coupons you will print, etc. Once you enter what you are willing to do over the month, hit the “calculate bonus” button at the bottom of the form and find out what your bonus will be if you accomplish the MyPoint goals you set.

11. Complete The Daily Poll

The Daily Poll is one question long. It is a simple way to earn a point per day and it helps you reach both your Monthly Goal and Daily 5, which will lead to even more points.

12. Daily 5

Right now the Daily 5 can be found on a tab of its own as well as under the “more” tab. It is a list of eight or so items and when you do five of them in one day, you get 5 points.

13. Search And Earn

Using the search and earn function of MyPoints can be a relatively simple way to earn points if you like the yahoo search engine, however, most people I know prefer Google so that is why I decided not to put it in the quick and simple area.

If you like the Yahoo search engine, then this feature could be a great way to earn points on a regular basis. To do so, make MyPoints your home page on your laptop and perform all your web searches there–when you do this, you will be rewarded points at random.

14. Point Perks

Like MyPoints on Facebook and follow them on Twitter, they list codes that you can enter into the Point Perks area and earn a few points.

15. Refer Friends

Once you get the hang of MyPoints and redeem your points for a gift card, you are going to want to share MyPoints with others and MyPoints will reward you for doing so. Under their current refer a friend program you get 25 points when your friend signs up and then 1,750 points once your friend spends $20 or more on a purchase made through MyPoints Shop section. Once these two things are completed MyPoints then will give you a points bonus of 10% of all qualifying points you friend earns (so if she earns 50 points, you get 5).

Hopefully you now have a good handle on all the different ways you can earn gift cards using MyPoints. Choose which ones work best for you and earning gift cards with MyPoints will be a quick and simple process.

No,MyPointswon’t make you rich, but when you do point-earning tasks through several point programs, you will start to see a good combined monthly return.

A Few More Things To Know About MyPoints

Before I end this post, I want to share something about MyPoints I find frustrating and something that I like about MyPoints.

Something I Find Frustrating About MyPoints

Points do sometimes take a while to register so even though it might say you have 1,650 points your account might only have 1,400 available to cash out. This is a bit frustrating, but not uncommon with point programs.

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Hi, I'm Victoria

Welcome to the Snail Pace Transformations blog where I share my tips for improving finances and home management one small step at a time. Why small? Because small changes are more likely to transform your life.